


Trade Mistakes

by TheoMiller



Category: Knight & Rogue - Hilari Bell
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 23:28:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4764977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheoMiller/pseuds/TheoMiller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Michael and Fisk slept together, and one time they had sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trade Mistakes

**Author's Note:**

> Fisk and Kathy do become a couple in the timeline of this fic; they also break up, off-screen, and it's probably (definitely) Fisk's fault. I didn't tag it as Fisk/Kathy because Fisk/Michael is endgame. Not that I'm not going to write Fisk/Kathy ever. I plan to. This, however, is not it.
> 
> Also. The title is a Panic! song. I am trash.

**1\. Fisk, during _The Last Knight_.**

Cracker gave me a sympathetic look as he left the room again, and Michael moaned softly in his sleep, his face flushed with fever. I flipped the cool rag on his forehead so the side chilled by the air was against the skin, and then rubbed at my tired eyes with hands that shook. From lack of sleep. Not from fear for Michael’s safety.

The noble idiot would be back on his feet in no time. Back to running around the country side on a wild goose chase for the Lady Ceciel, and spending too much money by not haggling, and refusing to lie, and stopping to help people, and dragging me along behind him, and all those other things he did that were so damned annoying.

I sighed and propped my elbow against his pillow, intending to just rest for a moment.

Then I was waking up with my head on folded arms, blinking blearily at the angry-looking welts across Michael’s shoulders. After a moment's confusion, I realized with a jolt that I must’ve slept for a few hours there next to him.

Muscles sore, I sat up and leaned away, rubbing at the back of my neck. I had to get him off this boat. If only to keep me from going mad.

 

**2\. Michael, shortly after _Player's Ruse_.**

I woke up suddenly, hitting my head on the bottom of the wagon Fisk and I slept under, and through the pain it took a moment for me to figure out what had disturbed me from sleep.

Fisk was making tiny whimpering noises in his sleep like a wounded dog, and thrashed around every once in a while. I reached out to shake his shoulder gently. “Fisk,” I said, “You’re dreaming, wake up.”

He started to bolt upright, and I threw my arm across his chest to keep him from repeating my mistake. His breathing was heavy, eyes wild in the dim light as he turned to look at me. Then, “Michael,” he said.

“Are you all right?” I asked, even though ‘twas obvious he wasn’t.

“I dreamt that—don’t ever get thrown off a cliff again,” Fisk cut himself off in a fierce voice.

I winced. “I won’t,” I said, starting to pull my arm away.

He seized a fistful of my shirt. His eyes were still wider than usual, staring at me like he'd gone quite mad. After a second, he loosened his grip on the shirt and blinked. “I—can you just, leave your arm there? I keep waking up thinking I went mad up there and dreamt you surviving.”

“Fisk,” I said, about to reassure him that I was perfectly fine, and then paused. “I’m going to let go of you for a second, but I’m just moving my bedroll, all right?”

“Okay,” he said.

I dragged my bedroll over next to his, and True, who’d been curled up at the foot of it, made a quietly disgruntled noise but otherwise didn’t react. When I laid back down and dragged my blanket over me, Fisk cleared his throat. “Good thinking.”

He wasn't so good at thanks—giving or receiving—so I took pity and didn't thank him, again, for his quick thinking in the fight on the cliffs.

I reached over to curl my fingers around his hand beside mine. “You saved my life,” I said. “I’m not dead, Fisk, and ‘tis all thanks to you.”

His sharp exhale of breath made me wish I could get away with hugging him, but instead I squeezed his hand. _Thank you_.

 

**3\. Fisk, during _Thief's War_.**

“We didn’t think this through,” I said, staring at the bed.

Michael rolled his eyes at me. “Sorry I didn’t think of sleeping arrangements when we were saving that family, or when I was running for my life, or—”

“Yes, yes, I get that, what I mean is, we don’t _have_ a sleeping arrangement. Do we alternate who sleeps in the bed? Or give this bed to the children? Are the children allowed to share a bed?” They didn’t seem… _inclined_ , but some people start do start that young, don’t they? I wasn’t even sure of their ages, to be honest.

“We’ll share it,” he said. “It won’t be the first time we’ve slept together.”

I knew what he meant – I’d moved my bedroll next to his a few times in the month or so after the incident on the cliff – but I raised my eyebrows at the wording, and he flushed.

“You know what I meant,” snapped Michael.

“I do,” I agreed. “Well, you’re better company than Trouble, I’ll give you that.”

“The orphans seem quite taken with him,” Michael said.

I lifted one side of the blankets and slid under them. “They’re lonely.”

I was careful to keep my voice clear, but Michael still caught it, pausing in climbing into bed to look at me. “You used to be a lot like them,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. I wasn’t sure I was much different from them even now. It was just as much of a novelty to have a business and a bed for me as it was for them. “Can you get the candle?”

He leaned over and blew out the flame, plunging the room into comparative darkness. Finally, “They adore you,” I told him, truthfully. Around the side-eyed distrust, I could see how in awe of him they were – a knight errant, working to stop the evil Tony Rose, giving them a stable life.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” he murmured.

“I would,” I said. “I remember what it’s like, to be an orphan struggling to get by, by hook or by crook, and for someone to come into your life and change it completely. And for the better.”

“Fisk…”

My voice was more pleading than I’d intended when I said, “Don’t go after Jack.”

“We have to take him down, Fisk,” he said, and the words stung. “For all those people the wreckers killed, and for the orphans and their families.”

It was a long time before I went to sleep after that.

**4\. Michael, shortly after _Scholar's Plot_.**

“No,” I said, staring at Kathy. “Absolutely not.”

She glared at me fiercely, but Fisk was already making a face somewhere between resignation and… something that looked like relief? Mayhap he was as uncomfortable as I was with the idea of sharing a bed with Kathy while I was in the room. “You’re not my father or my keeper, Michael, and besides, Fisk and I won’t – that is to say, we’re not—”

I resisted the urge to cover my ears, but she broke off, and Fisk cut in hastily, “You won’t convince him to change his mind on this one, Lady Kathryn,” he said.

“Then how will we divide it?” she asked, looking at Fisk out of the corner of her eye.

Fisk, who kept his eyes on me, shrugged. “I’ll share the bed with Michael. He kicks.”

“I do not!” I protested, fairly certain ‘twas not true – especially now that I’d stopped having nightmares about Fisk being hanged – but Kathy’s face looked equally relieved, and I realized my s—partner—was giving her a chance to not have to share a bed with her brother, which we’d done as children when she had nightmares, but now would be rather awkward. “Well. Um. Mayhap ‘tis true. And you’ll sleep better on your own, anyway.”

“Very well,” she said, and paused briefly to brush her knuckles down Fisk’s arm before she went to unpack her night things.

I turned to Fisk and cleared my throat awkwardly. “You haven’t—”

“No!” he said, and I knew him well enough to know he was telling the truth.

Something knotted in my chest relaxed at those words. But all I said was, “When you do, I don’t want to hear about it.” It was meant to sound teasing, but Fisk made a weird face, and I decided ‘twould be best for all our sanity if I stayed out of Fisk and Kathy’s relationship.

Mayhap ‘twas the added warmth from a second body – third, once True joined us – but I fell asleep with especial ease that night, and my dreams were evidently too ordinary for me to remember them the next day.

**5\. Fisk, well after _Scholar's Plot_.**

The roof of the inn was high enough, and sturdy enough, for me to sit on it and look out over the town, to the cottage I'd shared with my wife. I needed to move on, and once, a while ago, I would've done so without looking back. But I was a lot older now, and I'd actually thought… Well, it hadn't mattered what I'd thought.

“I had a feeling I’d find you here,” Michael said, and I was jerked out of my thoughts. He settled onto the clay shingles beside me without speaking again, and I let the silence stretch for a remarkably long time before I finally blurted out, “I was finally going to fight for something.”

“I know,” he murmured.

“I was going to choose my path, and I was going to—she was _there_ , and she was funny and smart and all grown up and she knew who I was and still liked me, and I thought…”

“You were in love, and you thought it was going to be different, even though ‘tis young love, because she was worth ignoring the cynical voice at the back of your mind telling you ‘twould never last.”

That was… exactly it. I turned to him, suspicious. “What would _you_ know?”

He looked over my face and then assured me, “Oh, there’s no mysterious past here,” he said. “Rosamund was my first, and those six weeks apart were…”

“Oh,” I said. We still hadn’t exactly talked about things. I felt a ridiculous, irrational urge to tell him… what? That I was sorry? I wished I hadn’t run off, but I didn’t regret letting Jack go. I couldn’t regret letting Jack go. What was it I had said to Michael? Some people can’t help but love people who abused them? I hadn’t even told Kathy that I’d been in love with Jack, so telling Michael—I closed my eyes. Caring about people is hard. Time to stop running from that, before I have no one left to care about.

Honesty. Right.

…I hate honesty. “I was in love with Jack, once.”

“I know,” he said, studying my face even more intently with curious blue eyes. “I know you, Fisk. I knew it when I saw your face in Huckerston, when I saw your face as you heard Jack’s voice for the first time in years.”

“You know me far too well,” I told him, starting to get frustrated with how cursed understanding the idiot was being. I’d broken his sister’s heart! The least he could do would be to punch me. A good brawl might make me feel better. Err, once we got off the roof. I refocused on Michael with a frown. “Maybe we should get you some friends.”

“I was thinking we could push our beds together and play Twenty-One until we’re tired enough to sleep.”

I grinned. “You know I cheat, right?”

“I know,” he said mildly, climbing to his feet and offering me his hand, as if I – a former cat burglar, thank-you-very-much – needed help climbing back into the inn. “’Tis why I cheat too.”

He did cheat, unabashedly, and eventually I tossed the entire deck at him and we had to play Fifty-Two Pickup instead of Twenty-One, and when we finally conceded neither of us could actually lose when we both cheated, we returned to the beds laughing.

“Do you want to start travelling again?” he asked. I hadn’t been so happy that my chest hurt since that night I’d first kissed Kathy, or maybe when I eloped with her, but those words did it. Despite the fact that Michael was here, with me, I’d been half-certain he would still pull away from me now that I’d broken up with his sister. That I’d finally managed to drive away the one good constant in my life with my bullshit.

I rolled over to face him. “Let’s visit my sisters.”

“All right,” said Michael, no questions asked.

“And no adventures.”

“Not even if they end in piles of gold?”

“Okay, maybe adventures.”

He grinned at me with easy comradery, and even though I was still terrified by the idea of returning to our old life without Kathy to act as a buffer, where it'd go back to me resenting Michael without telling him, letting things grow toxic between us, like everything did with me, I needed to do this. I _wanted_ to do this.

 _Okay_ , I thought. _I can do this._

And I put out the lantern and found his hand in the dark, already palm-up waiting for me.

 

**+1, Michael**

I’ve been a student of the minutia of Fisk’s facial expressions since the day I saw him on the judicar’s platform, and though I was less inclined to bragging than Fisk, I’d say I was something of an expert. But I’d never seen him quite like this.

“You know, since I'm the experienced one here,” he’d said, maybe ten minutes before, “can I suggest, in a professional capacity, that you try, maybe, actually doing something?”

Now he was stretched out beneath me with a faintly glassy-eyed look, sweat glistening on his skin as he caught his breath. Sated, blissful, content, and more than a little worn out, I quickly decided this was one of his better expressions, and resolved to replicate it many, many more times. Soon, hopefully.

Our fingers were still laced palm-to-palm above his head, and I pulled away regretfully to find a rag. Fisk made a tiny, happy noise.

“Gross,” he said, sounding pleased, as I cleaned us both off.

“Incredibly, terribly, awfully gross,” I agreed. But I was smiling, so it didn’t sound any more believable than his words. I finally deemed him clean enough to not be sticky later, and left the rag in the corner before I joined him in bed.

Fisk flapped a hand somewhat imperiously at me, and I returned my hand to his, where it belonged, our fingers interlocked. By silent agreement, we ended up lying on our sides facing each other. “I thought I was saving you, that day,” I murmured.

“You did save me. And a hundred times since.”

“I’d argue ‘twas you who saved me.”

“Well, yeah. One hundred and one times since.”

“Arrogant bastard,” I teased.

“Naïve fool.”

I reached up with my free hand to smooth a curl out of his face, and his breath hitched strangely. Then, “All that time I spent trying to find my own path,” he said, voice wry, “and all along it was you.”

“No,” I said. “People can’t be paths. We had totally different paths, and through sheer force of will we brought ours together, even though ‘twas impossible. We’re very stubborn, you and I. Our paths are intertwined, not linked like chains, but wound together like vines ‘til ‘tis impossible to be sure where I end and you begin.”

“Wow. Even that creepy Pendarian professor had better poetry than you,” said Fisk, and I kicked at his ankles.

Somehow that ended up with my thigh between his legs, and sloppy, open-mouthed kisses, and starting round two (Fisk paused at one point, said “didn’t we just get clean?” and then promptly forgot his objections). But I wasn’t going to complain.


End file.
